Truths suppressed by the Establishment and society generally, and analytical overviews of reality to deepen understanding. All contents copyrighted. Brief quotations with attribution and URL [jasonzenith.blogspot.com] permitted.
Check out my other blog at taboo-truths.blogspot.com

Thursday, April 28, 2011

"There is, to be sure, a substantial constituency for press-bashing. And I acknowledge that the press can be annoying, simplistic, predictable, herdlike, insatiable, imperious, sloppy and mean. I've long argued that every budding journalist should have the chastening experience of being written about.[sic]" -Bill Keller, New York Times Magazine, June 19,2011, p. 12.

Imperious is something the Times inherently is. So here's an example of mean.

Bill Keller, the top boss editor of the New York Times, did a breathtaking thing on Sunday, Jan. 30. He put a nasty, petty, adolescent-style piece of invective against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on the front page of that rag's magazine section. This is one of the paper's number one attention-getting forum, along with the front page of Sunday's news section.

To illustrate the pathetic level of insult Keller is operating on, I'll quote the key words on the cover and highlighted in large summary quotes within the article:

First, the title: "The Boy Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest: Dealing With Julian Assange and His Secrets."

So right off the bat, Assange is branded a reckless delinquent, a BOY (demeaning) who behaves irresponsibly and brings trouble upon himself. (So if I guess if the U.S. carries out its threats to murder or imprison him, it'll be his own fault.) He's not a man who courageously exposes the secrets of the U.S. Empire. (Well, as the NYT is regarded as the top propaganda organ of that very empire, what can you expect?) Assange, a 39-year-old man, is a "boy," as contrasted to the mature, "responsible" propaganda boss Keller, eh?

The table of contents summarizes thusly: "Is Julian Assange the great puppet master of the news media? He would like you to think so. [Oh would he? I never got that impression. But unlike the typical Times' reader, I've had the opportunity to hear him speak at length, via the "alternative" media.] But The Times's dealings with him reveal a different story." Do tell, Keller.

Then we come to the story, illustrated with drawings of Assange that start out unflattering and progress to grotesque, including one with "j'accuse j'assange" plastered over his face.

Just so you don't miss it, Keller arranged for the following pullquotes from the article to be boldfaced and set apart:

"'He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles.HE SMELLED AS IF HE HADN'T BATHED IN DAYS.'"

They put that last bit in caps, just so, and in RED so you wouldn't miss it.

Here's the next highlighted segment:

"An air of intrigue verging on paranoia permeated the project. We used encrypted Web sites. Reporters exchanged notes via Skype. On conference calls, WE SPOKE IN AMATEURISH CODE."

There they go with the red again.

Maybe Keller should have shared his professional code with Assange. Of course, if Keller is so amateurish that he doesn't understand the need for security, then he obviously is a walking illustration of the Peter Principle- a man who has risen above his level of competence.

Paranoia? Prominent people in the U.S. openly called for Assange's assasination. The U.S. secret police and military have repeated launched cyberattacks against WikiLeaks. We only now a tiny fraction of the persecution and harassment WikiLeaks has been subjected to.

From start to finish, the piece is a pure hit job. Amazing that Keller undertook this character-assassination piece personally. That indicates the malevolence he feels for Assange. (He apparently hates Arianna Huffington too- in another Sunday mag. piece, he repeatedly stuck a shiv in her too.)

The U.S. has a history of murdering journalists who cross it. They have repeatedly bombed Al-Jazeera offices, murdering their personnel. They attacked the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad,. murdering two European journalists. WikiLeaks itself showed the world video footage of U.S. helicopter pilots gleefully slaughtering 2 Reuters journalist and other Iraqis in Baghdad, then attacking people who came to their aid, wounding children in the process. The crime of the victims? Walking down the street in the middle of the day. And the punishment for the murderers? Nothing- but the suspected exposer of this crime, Private Bradley Manning, is facing life in prison (the gangster U.S. Government kindly decided not to seek the death penalty) as they subject him to systematic psychological torture to break him. And there are numerous other lethal attacks on journalists by the U.S. (An Al-Jazeera cameraman was imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp for 6 years, while they pumped him for information on Al-Jazeera's operations and tried to force him to be a spy inside Al-Jazeera as the price of his freedom. Amazingly, he didn't break.)

Yes, gangster is the right word for these cynical thugs. Anyway, what do you call people who kill for money? Gangsters. And that is what U.S. foreign policy is all about; maximizing the profit of hugh corporations and financial parasites by making sure every country is ruled by a cooperative regime, as much as possible.

THE NY TIMES' VIEW OF JULIAN ASSANGE

These are some of the crude, derogatory images the "newspaper of record" cooked up to go with Keller's hatchet job.

I started this piece with a quote from Keller about his belief that it's salutary for journalists to "have the chastening experience of being written about." Well, "Bill," consider yourself chastised, although I'm sure you aren't chastened.

On the latest batch of WikiLeaks documents, about the classification and fate of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, the NY Times can't seem to decide if it "obtained" the documents from WikiLeaks or from someone else. [And yes, concentration camp is what it is, since the U.S. insists the prisoners aren't "prisoners of war," and says the Geneva Conventions don't apply, meaning it isn't a POW camp, and they have no rights to a trial, which means it isn't a prison for convicted criminals, nor a jail for pre-trial detainees, as both Bush and Obama have stated they intend to keep most of them imprisoned without trial indefinitely- presumably for life- that makes it a concentration camp. Concentration camps were not a Nazi invention- the British used them to imprison Afrikaaners during the Boer War around the turn of the 20th century.]

First they grudgingly admitted they came from WikiLeaks, then the next day they said they "obtained" them from "another source." Which would have had to been from another media organization that got them from WikiLeaks. The noxious Bill Keller,the major domo of the Times, made an appearance in the news columns about it that day.

Today they're back to saying they got them from WikiLeaks. Decide, Times. Get your story straight.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The New York Times sure is an arrogant rag. For the past two days they are once again dependent for a major story on WikiLeaks for supplying the documents. (This time the story is about how the U.S. classified Guantanamo prisoners, and the releases of them.) On April 25 in two page one stories, the Times pretended it "obtained" the documents all by itself. Inside, in the middle of a 2-page spread, in one spot there's a mention of WikiLeaks.

Next day, April 26, they run an editorial about the story, claiming they "obtained" the documents, as if they somehow ferreted them out of the Government on their own. No mention of WikiLeaks whatsoever.

Meanwhile, these ungrateful turds have painted a bullseye on Julian Assange, the main man behind WikiLeaks. Their major domo top editor, a puffed-up worm named Bill Keller, personally ran a cover story in their Sunday magazine January 30 which was a blatant hatchet job on Assange- just a bunch of sneers and name-calling like something from a catty junior high school clique. His sycophantic employees jumped on the anti-Assange campaign with cheap smears of their own, to curry favor with Big Bill.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Well, here's more overwhelming evidence that the Taliban are inevitably going to take over Afghanistan in the near future.

They just broke out of an Afghan-run prison about 500 Taliban prisoners. By digging a 380 meter long tunnel from outside. It would be a funny Keystone Kops movie if it wasn't tragically true.

This is the exact same prison that the Taliban freed 1200 prisoners (350 were Taliban) from 3 years ago by blowing a hole in the wall and storming the place, slaughtering 15 guards in the process. And the prison is right in the city of Kandahar, not out in the middle of nowhere.

This while the U.S. and its Eurostooge allies prattle on about "transferring security responsibility to our Afghan allies," a "process" that's supposed to be complete by 2014. Obama's withdrawal starts this July.

Too bad there aren't enough Afghans who don't want to live under a feudal, virulently anti-female, totalitarian system to fight back. And it doesn't help that those Paki bastards provide sanctuary and support for the terrorists, while lying through their teeth about it. And organizing terrorist attacks on India and on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Oh, and the Saudis funding the global spread of the vicious Wahhabist ideology that is the root cause of the horrors.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

A hoary saw of American political mythology is that "partisanship ends at the water's edge," meaning that, whatever their ideological/political differences on domestic policies, the two corporate capitalist parties present a united front to the rest of the world. That is, they are united as U.S. Imperialists.

Increasingly, this "loyal opposition" agreement is a one-way street. The Democrats back GOP Presidents imperial adventures, but the GOP might as well be traitors in their automatic opposition to whatever any Democratic President does. (The most recent example of Dems supporting the GOP was when they fell all over themselves in a panic to back Bush the Younger's unprovoked aggression against Iraq- but don't get me wrong, Saddam Hussein was vicious scum and it's good that he and his sons are finally dead and his horrendously evil regime is gone- a regime the U.S. fully backed,even blaming the gassing of the Iraqi Kurds on IRAN in a DIA report, until he invaded Kuwait. Then suddenly he became the Devil.)

The latest example is the GOP teaming up with extreme reactionary Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Israel's fifth column in the U.S., led by AIPAC, to undermine President Obama. See the article at
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/201141611819193138.html for details.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Ann Coulter, the fascist harridan, is inflicting yet another "book" on the world. As usual, the title and content are designed to infuriate. But what's interesting to me is how this is another example of a phenomenon one observes over and over with reactionaries: how they project. That is, they attribute aspects of themselves which they won't consciously acknowledge, to external objects/people. This projection is a way of disowning the loathsome aspects of themselves.

And I guess you could say it's hypocritical too.

This book is titled "Demonic," (see what I mean?) and topics include "the Democratic Party's coddling of violent mobs." Really? And who are those goons who scream at Town Hall meetings and go to see the President of the United States strapped with guns? That would be the Tea Party and assorted other fascist, racist fanatics. In fact, white racists and fascists are the grass root backbone of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers).

Her previous book was called "Guilty." More projection.

Of course, it reveals the nature of the U.S. media that it elevates and treats seriously a demented shrew like Coulter. That reflects the class interests the U.S. media represents- the corporate oligarchy.

In the past few days, the Taliban pulled off 3 suicide bomber attacks in Afghanistan. They dressed their death-loving kamikazes in Afghan army or police uniforms, and were able to bump off the police chief of Kandahar Province (again- this is like the 3rd time they've done that) 5 NATO soldiers, and snuck one of their killer robots inside the Defense Ministry in Kabul, where he shot 10, killing a couple, until the mad dog was gunned down before he could detonate his bomb vest.

Some creature named Zabiullah Mujaheed, a Taliban mouthpiece, gloated "This inflicts more casualties and does not cause any civilian casualties." A bit of a lie there; let's say fewer civilians. (Last year 75% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan were done by the Taliban.)

Two reasons: 1) Arab despots oppress the Palestinians same as the Jews do. Egypt has always been brutal towards them. The Jordanian “Kings” (beloved of the U.S. media) oppress their Palestinian majority. Egypt helps enforce the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Egypt and Jordan have all kinds of secret deals with the Israelis. Democracies would have a hard time selling such deals to their publics.

2) if Arab nations become democratic, then Israel CAN NO LONGER SAY IT’S THE ONLY MIDEAST DEMOCRACY!! This is a big excuse for U.S. support of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and overall fanatical U.S. support for Israel and whatever it does.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

In Michigan the GOP Fuhrer has already seized some towns and schoolboards and neutered the local elected officials in legal coups.

DemocracyNow says: "Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has been sued by two of the state’s pensions boards over a new law permitting state-appointed financial managers emergency powers to terminate employee contracts and suspend collective bargaining. Emergency managers in Michigan are currently running the cities of Pontiac, Ecorse and Benton Harbor, as well as a number of Detroit schools. The General Retirement System of the City of Detroit and the Police and Fire Retirement System filed a complaint against the law in a federal court in Detroit." [http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/20/headlines#7]
and:
"Residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, voiced outrage Monday night after the city’s elected mayor and city commissioners were stripped of all power by an unelected emergency financial manager appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Last week, the emergency manager issued an order saying the city commissioners have no power beyond calling meetings to order, approving minutes and adjourning meetings. City Commissioner Dennis Knowles compared Benton Harbor to a dictatorship. He said, "For the people we represent, they are truly being disenfranchised." Meanwhile, Rev. Jesse Jackson toured Michigan on Monday to help build a coalition against Gov. Snyder. Jackson said, “We don’t like one-man rule, except in Benton Harbor. We are setting up here what we are fighting there. Your vote for elected officials doesn’t count, and that is decimating democracy." [http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/19/headlines]

Monday, April 18, 2011

Governor Scott Walker, puppet of the billionaire Koch brothers, is preparing a so-called "Emergency Management Bill" that his Reichstag-style one-party drone legislature will pass. The right-wing business magazine Forbes reports that Walker is going to grab the power to take over local municipalities and appoint "emergency managers" who will then cancel union contracts, dismiss elected officials and school board members, and take control of entire cities and towns. Walker would also have unchecked authority to cancel government services, including safety net assistance. A right-wing Wisconsin law firm is drawing up the dictatorial law that would totally strip citizens of democratic rights to elect their own mayors and other local officials. The totalitarian GOP has already passed such a dictatorial law in Michigan.

This comes after the Wisconsin GOP blatantly stole a recall election aimed at one of their apparatchiks on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thus protecting the illegal law the GOP just passed stripping public workers of the right to have unions represent them in collective bargaining. (See Forbes blog and Daily Kos articles at:

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The military dictatorship that ruled Egypt with ex-Air Force Chief Hosni Mubarak as its head (he traded his uniform for a business suit and a nice civilian-sounding title after his patron Anwar Sadat was assassinated and Mubarak stepped into Sadat's jackboots) is up to its same old vicious tricks. Namely killing protesters, beating and gassing them, "arresting" them and torturing them, etc. And they like to subject their women victims to "virginity tests"- a bunch of leering soldiers standing around ogling their vaginas while someone checks their hymens, apparently- and then smear them as "prostitutes." (What is it anyway with Muslims and hypersubjugation of women?)

Now an Egyptian military court has just sentenced a 25-year-old blogger and conscientious objector, Maikel Nabil, to three years in prison. His Crime? "Insulting" the military. The "insult" being pointing out their brutality and suppression of citizens. Oh, and also spreading "false [i.e. true] information." Nabil is the founder of the "No to Compulsory Military Service Movement." But you can't say Egyptian military "justice" isn't speedy- they just arrested him March 28th!

A rebellion might overthrow an individual. It takes a revolution to overthrow a system.

Friday, April 08, 2011

The U.S.-backed tyrant of Yemen is killing and wounding people daily for daring to march in the streets calling for his ouster. This dictator "President" swings between phony promises to step down, and flat-out murder. His top general went over to the protesters' side a couple of weeks ago, promising to use his military units to protect the protesters. Where is that big talker? I don't see any protection.

And a non-U.S.-backed dictator, (non-U.S.-backed because he won't make nice with Israel), Assad of Syria, who inherited his daddy's dictatorship, is doing the same in Syria. He also likes to call himself a "President." Sounds so much more legitimate than "dictator."

Obama has pulled out of the Libyan battle. As a result, there aren't any AC-130 gunships or A-10 Warthog tank killers in the battle. The Europeans have no aircraft comparable to these planes, which can provide close combat support and pick off targets in crowded urban areas.

Obama said Qaddafi "has to go." (Although he's stopped saying that.) You'd think a smart man like that would finally learn to watch what he says, since he's a punk. Also he just plain lies a lot, like Bill Clinton. Both are slippery con men.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

NY State Assembly boss Sheldon Silver just traded the interests of his constituents, and indeed of everyone who lives in New York State (except the rich) to benefit his own pocket.

New York State is a horrible oligarchy, run for the benefit of the megarich who live in Manhattan and summer in the Hamptons. Their political frontmen do their bidding. On the state level, it is openly acknowledged even by the official establishment media that "three men in a room," the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the State Assembly, hold all the legislative power. The rest of the "people's" "elected representatives" act like sheep who vote in lockstep to ratify whatever deals these three bosses cut.

The Assembly Speaker for many years is a lawyer by the name of Shelton Silver, who ostensibly represents the (mostly poor) inhabitants of the lower east side of Manhattan. He is a principal in the law firm of Weitz and Luxenberg. This firm specializes in personal injury torts and medical malpractice cases. It openly advertises for injured parties.

The usual practice in this area of law is for the law firm to take cases on a contingency fee basis- that is, they take a (hefty) percentage of any judgment won for their injured client. (Since the clients generally don't have tens of thousands of dollars, or even more, to pay attorneys to represent them in cases that typically drag on for years.) The fee is usually 30-40% of the ultimate settlement or verdict, assuming they win.

So naturally a cap on medical malpractice awards would be detrimental to the interests of such a law firm and its principals.

Shelton Silver made a big show recently of claiming to want an extension of the surcharge on taxpayers with an annual income of $200,000 and up. Then he proposed letting it expire except for incomes starting at $1,000,000. To put this in perspective:

For the period 2009 through 2011, the 6.85% state income tax rose to 7.85% for individuals making $200,000 to $500,000 and for married couples earning $300,000 to $500,000, and to 8.97% for households earning more than $500,000. In 2009, the Legislature also killed itemized deductions (except for charitable gifts) for taxpayers with adjusted gross income of more than $1 million. For 2010 and 2011, taxpayers pulling in over $10 million could deduct only 25% of their charitable donations rather than 50%.

Revenue from the measures has been growing: from $4 billion in 2009 to about $4.6 billion in 2010. They were projected to add $5 billion this year.

Silver also claimed to be making an extension of the expiring rent stabilization laws for New York City part of the budget deal. (NYC is a colony of Albany, for some reason. Mainly because local hacks like Silver keep selling city residents down the river.)

So what happened? Silver traded it all away for killing a proposed cap on medical malpractice court awards. In other words, he put his personal financial interests above the interests of the entire state.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, a clone of his father, is a Republican in Democratic guise. He balanced the budget by cutting taxes for the rich (called "no new taxes" or "no tax increase" in the twisted jargon of the corporate press) and slashing billions from the health and education budgets. (God knows what the sellout union bosses got in return.)

The media hailed it- except, notably, the NY Times. The tabloid rags of NYC, the NY Post and NY Daily News, owned, respectively, by reactionary plutocrats Rupert Murdoch (an Australian billionaire) and Mortimer Zuckerman (a Canadian billionaire) beat the drums to kill the surcharge, and hailed its victory- dedicated to brainwashing the working classes to support the class interests of the rich as usual. (It reminds one of Jay Gould's boast in the 19th century that he "can always hire half the working class to kill the other half.")

Silver's ass was well covered for him by the media- they deliberately didn't connect the dots between his "victory" on the medical malpractice cap and his personal interest. And what logical connection is there between that cap, and tax cuts for the rich, and landlords' freedom to gouge?

We've been here many times before with the venal lawyer and political boss Silver. He abolished a commuter tax on out of state people employed in New York City, as part of a scheme to win an additional assembly seat- which seat went to the GOP anyway! NYC still lives with the consequences of that lost income. (Just as it lives with the loss of billions of dollars thanks to Ed Koch killing a tiny stock transfer tax on stock trades. The definition of a reactionary- a warrior for rich people so they can get ever richer.)

In the U.S. today, 1% of the households get 25% of the income. The majority get poor, and the poor are under assault. Obama slashes home heating assistance for them, and the GOP fanatics insist it isn't enough. So the Democrats offer to "compromise," with more assaults on the poor, on already too weak environmental regulation, and so forth.

And of course the GOP agenda is to roll back the clock to 1920-or maybe 1890. On top of the assault on the final citadel of labor unions, the public workers' unions, whose very right to bargain with their government employers has been revoked by GOP fanatics in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere, now the GOP has unveiled a plan to kill Medicaid and Medicare. The poor will be forced to pay a large chunk of their medical bills, which they have no money to do, and Medicare will be turned into a voucher program under which the old and disabled will be given (not enough) money and told to buy themselves insurance from the insurance industry corporations that are a huge part of the problem with medical costs in the U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, another reactionary from Wisconsin, rolled out the scheme this week. (What is it about Wisconsin? From Joseph McCarthy on to Scott Walker and now this dog?)

As previously noted, "pastor" Terry Jones (how generic is that name?) the leader of a tiny Christianoid cult of 20-30 cretins in Florida, staged a make-believe "trial" of the Koran on March 20. ("Trying" a book- how's that for a medieval totalitarian mentality?) He "sentenced" the book to death by burning. This bizarre publicity stunt was duly videoed and posted online.

But something went awry in his plan this time. Unlike last fall, when he garnered global media coverage for his threat to burn the book, which he aborted after pleas from top generals and officials that he'd be endangering U.S. troops, this time the media behaved responsibly for a change and ignored the insignificant "event."

Enter "President" Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Since the primitive population of Afghanistan had failed to notice Jones' stunt, Karzai proceeded on Thursday March 31 (eleven days later) to bring the "outrage" to their attention in a speech. The next day, the mullahs did their part and incited rabid mobs to murder 7 UN employees, whose crime is trying to help the backward fanatics who infest Afghanistan. Rioting by righteous mobs continued for several more days, producing more deaths.

A word on Karzai: here's a carpetbagger from the U.S., who with his family and cronies has stolen many millions, if not billions, of foreign aid intended to build infrastructure and provide basic services for the backward dirt farmers Karzai nominally rules. Karzai provides no services and no actual government to Afghanistan- just a pathetic burlesque. Was the purpose of his provocation to score points with the Taliban? (Surely he understands that as soon as the Taliban is back in power, his life isn't worth a plugged nickel, should he be so foolish as to fail to flee to the sack of loot he's stashed in Dubai.) Is he merely a cheap demagogue pandering to the prejudices of the most primitive elements of his populace? Who knows?

Once again his Western patrons gave him a pass. Afghanistan is shaping up as another "South" Vietnam.
The future here after the U.S. leaves is a return of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda is already back- it was just reported yesterday that in September the U.S. bombed an Al-Qaeda training camp set up inside Afghanistan near the Pakistan (natch) border. (Those duplicitous Paki bastards provide a haven for the Wahhabist cutthroats.)

Sunday, April 03, 2011

A Catholic Church poohbah, Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester, New Hampshire, just had a big fat brick smash through the moral glass house he inhabits. The brick was hurled by one D.J.Bettencourt, a Republican N.H. State Representative, who on his Facebook page called the good Bishop "a pedophile pimp."

You see, the Bishop opined that the vicious state budget cuts (being enacted nearly universally across the U.S., using the economic downturn as an excuse, even though the real reason is the trillions of dollars hoarded by the rich and their corporations) hurt the most vulnerable members of society. (Of course, reactionaries' attitude toward society is best exemplified by Margaret Thatcher, who between smashing unions opined that "there is no such thing as society" when rejecting the notion that the government should aid the poor, homeless, etc.)

Bettencourt, aggressively defending his neofascist party's assault on social spending, retorted"Would the bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the ‘vulnerable?'" “This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a raincoat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.” Bettencourt said he was referring to McCormack's service in Boston under Cardinal Bernard L. Law, in which capacity McCormack was assigned the delicate task of investigating- read, cover up- complaints that priests had sexually abused minors. (He was promoted to bishop of Manchester in 1998. Apparently he did a fine job perpetuating the Church's decades-long coverup of its institutionalized pedophilia for a few more years. Or is it centuries long? Probably.)

But all good (or bad) things must come to an end. Eventually the elephant stuffed under the rug got noticed- the media finally stopped aiding and abetting the coverup. So in 2002, the archdiocese of Boston cut a sweetheart deal with state prosecutors that killed a criminal investigation. The diocese admitted it had protected abusive priests and submitted itself to "audits." (Whatever that means. They look at your paperwork.)

I.E., they admitted to a criminal conspiracy and to aiding and abetting pedophilia- sexual assaults on children- for years. But hey, they're holy men! You gotta cut them some slack! (This attitude of mine is labeled "cynicism," a twisted inversion of reality. The cynics are the "authority" figures- the cynical bastards in power who manipulate people into obedience and submission and preach rules and morality they violate secretly themselves. And it's doubly cynical of them to stick the cynic label, which belongs on themselves, on people who see through their bullshit and call it out.)

Then, in what sounded like a veiled threat to sue Bettencourt, the Manchester diocese said Mr. Bettencourt’s comments were false and defamatory. But Bettencourt stuck to his guns, saying that the bishop had “brought shame and dishonor on my church here in New Hampshire.”

Which just goes to show how gutsy he is- aside from the fact that U.S. politicians are bred to kiss the rings of the bosses of organized religion- Bettencourt is a Roman Catholic! That means he risks being "excommunicated" and thus having his "immortal soul" burn for all eternity in "hell." Wow! Sounds scary!
(Plus, what is he gets sued??!!!)

But seriously, the Catholic Church only gets tough with pols who support women's right to control their ownbodies and terminate pregnancies. That's all. Even murdering the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, didn't cause the Vatican to break with the fascist death squad rulers of El Salvador. The Catholic Church is fundamentally reactionary- regardless of the occasional humanistic jabber you hear from them. The ones who really believe it and practice it are routinely murdered in Latin America (less frequently these days while L.A. is in one of its periods of civilian rule) and the Vatican looks the other way. (Unlike the holy stink they raised when a single priest was murdered by Polish secret policemen in the bad old Soviet days. Those secret policemen were actually tried and imprisoned by the Polish socialist government!)

UPDATE: April 8: Yesterday Bettencourt punked out and apologized to the Bishop after a private meeting with him. Maybe the Bishop threatened to have "God" send him to hell. Of course it's easier to attack powerless poor people than the powerful, eh Betty?

They're at it again- in Pakistan. Bombing a religious shrine they hate, murdering 30, wounding 100. The Pakistani military has reaped the whirlwind, creating and sponsoring these fanatical thugs. What a case of "blowback." The Paki military thought only India (and the West) would be the victims. Now that they've created a monster, their people are paying the price.

Too bad the Paki people are another gang of ingrates who feel their sovereignty is insulted when the U.S. does the job their own military won't do and kills the leaders of these terrorist gangs with drone strikes in the Paki badlands bordering Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Saturday, April 3rd, the immature Libyan rebel habit of firing weaons into the air just to get a rush bit them on the ass. A fool fired a heavy machine gun into the air for no apparent reason, bringing down a NATO airstrike which about 13 of them and left behind some Libyan cripples. One rebel lost part of a leg. This rebel says he saw a shepherd with his arms blown off. Others had burns. (NY Times account 4/4.)

Now maybe they Libyans can train themselves by teaching each other this story as an object lesson in the stupidity of lack of fire discipline. But unfortunately I'm not holding my breath.

But they're a cut above Afghans. Their spokesman said it was the rebels' own fault, which of course it was. Afghans would have howled in fury at the West. Afghans always blame outsiders for their problems- the same outsiders trying to free them from medieval tyranny, and building them free canals, schools, clinics, water treatment plants...hopeless ingrates. And their "government," headed by Thief-In-Chief Hamid Karzai, just steals. This is all gonna end up like "South" Vietnam, a government that will collapse like a house of cards as soon as their foreign protectors leave and the Taliban blows on it.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

All people in favor of human liberation have to be disappointed by the pathetic military qualities of the Libyan rebels. Unfortunately they have proven to be nothing more than a totally unorganized rabble with AK-47s and a few heavier weapons. Their idea of combat is to race forward, firing their weapons into the air (wasting ammo, which they are short of to begin with- they also like to fire off ammo into the sky whenever their spirits are high on whatever piece of good news they've heard that moment) and then run for their lives the second Qaddafi's forces start shelling them. Typical Arabs, they veer between two emotional states: preposterously hyperbolic bluster, bombast, and braggadocio, and bitterly whining and blaming their problems on the West, NATO, the UN, the "international community" for not rescuing them. They take big (how many times have they already said they were going to take Tripoli "in a few days"?) then blame outsiders for their failures. They think that if someone gave them more weapons, they could magically win battles. As if it takes no training to operate a tank, fire an artillery piece and actually hit a target, ditto a mortar, a rocket launcher, a machine gun, whatever. A telling vignette occurred in the first couple of weeks, when a deserting army officer tried to organize them by having them line up. (The very first basic baby-step of military training- learning to line up at attention and march.) Immediately a loud argument broke out because these fools just wanted to run off and fire their guns.

A month in to this spontaneous rebellion, no lessons have been learned, no organization has occurred, no command structure has been created. It's just bands of guns in cars and pickups racing hither and yon, running for their lives as soon as they meed resistance, yelling "run!" like the Knights in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's a sad joke.

The so-called Committee or Council or whatever the hell name it has doesn't have any authority over anyone- it just tries to fool outsiders that it somehow constitutes a government and asks for weapons and aid. It's a grabbag of various Libyans, some of dubious background, including Qaddafi regime apparatchiks.

Here's a suggestion: let their fellow Arabs, the Egyptians, which could roll over Qaddafi in a week or less, help them out. The military junta in Egypt, left intact after the so-called "revolution" that only ousted Mubarak and his small clique, refuses to aid their Arab brothers. (Some Libyans are Berbers, just to be accurate.) Air power cannot win the war for the rebels, unless Qaddafi is specifically targeted. For some reason "the West" is gunshy about doing this. Guess they don't want to be seen killing a member of the Club of Rulers, even one who has been told to step down. The whining rebels blame their impotence on not enough air power, instead of their own incompetence. At least we hear less of the bullshit bluster about how Tripoli is going to fall tomorrow.

Friday, April 01, 2011

"Controversial" Florida pastor Terry Jones, a marginal fanatic and hustler who the media built up into an international figure instead of giving him little or no attention (as they routinely do to various progressives even when they hold rallies of thousands of people) went ahead and burned a Koran to satisfy his insatiable lust for free publicity and feelings of self-importance. This provoked primitive Afghans to attack a wholly innocent target of opportunity; a UN compound in Afghanistan, murdering 20 people there. [1] A typical redneck self-styled holy man, Jones is a classic American hustler and con artist of the Elmer Gantry type, indigenous to primitive U.S. redneck culture. Provoking ignorant, backward, brainwashed Afghans is akin to bearbaiting.

So the "Christian" Jones, through his deliberately provocative, gratuitous, publicity-seeking act, has the blood of 20 people on his hands. He was warned months ago that such violence in the Muslim world would be a predictable outcome of his hate-speech act.

Thanks, asshole.

Too bad he didn't do it in France or Germany, where they'd lock him up.

Oh, by the way, leftists get locked up ALL THE TIME in America for free speech "crimes." Like Martin Sostre, who spent decades in New York State prisons. Sostre's crime was selling Marxist books in his bookstore. An FBI agent told him to stop. Sostre, naive and defiant, told the agent he had a right to sell them. The secret policeman's ominous reply was "O.K., Marty, have it your way."

Next thing you know, Sostre was framed up on spurious heroin dealing charges. Detectives had a junkie give Sostre some money to hold for him- marked bills- then told the detectives he'd purchased a small bag of heroin from Sostre. Sostre was railroaded into a 41 year prison sentence for this.